Of course they are motivated to make it hard to claim expenses. This is genius.
Software horror show: SAP Concur
81–90 of 204 posts
Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur
#82> Assume that bad technical decisions are made rationally, for reasons that are not apparent.
Actually, this example proves the rule.
Large enterprise applications like this are used by governments and large businesses that must comply with various accounting, legal, and administrative regulations. So vendors like SAP are incentivized to deliver products that take the least amount of effort and incur the least amount of risk while still meeting the twisty little maze of requirements. If bogo-sort is the least-effort way of organizing the location list, bogo-sort it is. For example it may add the locations to a map or hash table, and then iterate over them in an unspecified order.
Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur
#83We actually joke around the area where SAP is located (Walldorf, Germany). In surrounding cities devs joke about the fact that there are literally dozens if not hundreds of web agencies doing nothing more than mobile/tablet ready SAP user interfaces. That's their only business model. I'm not kidding you, there's an entire ecosystem around the fact that SAP UI5 is so crap that people cannot use it on their smartphones…
The people buying the software don't have to use it, would you buy your corporate underlings the comfortable, expensive shoes or just enough rags to painfully remind them who their masters are?
SAP produce the lowest cost rags in town, and you will learn to love them.
Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
We used Excel based expense reporting for years, it takes me much less time to assemble my reports on concur, I rather like it, its the least of all evils.
Could it be that by using Excel you just move complexity of reporting to someone who have to extract these data from Excel and import it into some system or analyze it?
Curious, what is the complexity of extracting data from excel or of loading a csv file into an external reporting system?
Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can enter each day manually now, with fees. It’s been this way for at least 7 years. That’s how long I’ve been filing expense reports with concur for hotels.
I do remember that being a thing, but I think with the way it auto populated from our booking system meant I couldn't use it. It's been a bit, but I'm pretty sure I had to go through that realization each time too
It’s definitely not pleasant, but it eventually works with enough clicks.
Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur
#86We actually joke around the area where SAP is located (Walldorf, Germany). In surrounding cities devs joke about the fact that there are literally dozens if not hundreds of web agencies doing nothing more than mobile/tablet ready SAP user interfaces. That's their only business model. I'm not kidding you, there's an entire ecosystem around the fact that SAP UI5 is so crap that people cannot use it on their smartphones…
> I don't even know how to rationalize this anymore.
Bad UI doesn't matter, while the company's exec is golfing with the sales rep from SAP. And after the deal is done the exec has an assistant responsible for filing expenses etc.
What then counts for the exec are the reporting features, where somebody can send them a nice report on all the expense bookings, accounted for tax and all those complicated things, and agreggated per depertment etc. and knowing that expenses which can be passed down to customers are put in the invoicing systems ... that's the area where the value of such systems lies. Not in usability.
Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur
#87We actually joke around the area where SAP is located (Walldorf, Germany). In surrounding cities devs joke about the fact that there are literally dozens if not hundreds of web agencies doing nothing more than mobile/tablet ready SAP user interfaces. That's their only business model. I'm not kidding you, there's an entire ecosystem around the fact that SAP UI5 is so crap that people cannot use it on their smartphones…
The people buying the software don't have to use it, would you buy your corporate underlings the comfortable, expensive shoes or just enough rags to painfully remind them who their masters are? SAP produce the lowest cost rags in town, and you will learn to love them.
I thought SAP was extremely expensive.
Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I will say that it does have good integration between the company card transactions and the expense reporting feature. This surprised me too. Every expense system is ass but at least that saves a lot of data entry.
I'd hazard a guess that it's because it's sold to finance people that value that sort of functionality (reconciliation of bank statement events with expense claims). Not much thought is given to the end users that have to put up with these tools.
This ^^^
The issue is a typical moral hazard, where the people who buy the software aren't the ones who have to bear the pain of using it.
The requirements from the finance team were probably all around “expense coding is mandatory” and “pick things from a list to avoid typos”; i.e. things that make their lives easier.
When it came to user experience, it got a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ or no consideration at all. After all, most finance people rarely if ever travel.
SAP has little incentive to put effort (money) into fixing it, because (1) they’ve got an ecosystem of third parties that do that and also probably serve as resellers or at least evangelists, and (2) complaints are going to help desk, not finance, so SAP’s paying customers aren't advocating for a fix.
Executives are just handing their EA’s a wad of receipts; they don't feel the pain either.
Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur
#89As the author mentions. This was a failure on and down the chain, from QA to PMs. When I see software like this, it reeks to me of contractor work. We hire them to handle something that we don’t have time for our core team, and or something not very important. The result is the devs do a minimal job to get paid. QA doesn’t care and the PMs either didn’t see it, or have bigger fish to fry.
That’s funny. I used to work for a high-end consulting company, and we always marveled at the level of dysfunction in our clients’ IT departments. They would call us in when their devs couldn’t/wouldn’t do the work. We were pretty expensive by comparison, but at least we got the job done. I guess it just depends on the kind of contractor you hire.
That’s funny. I’ve recently been involved with several projects steered by high-end consulting firms. They were all complete shit shows, most of all the SAP projects.
The problem IMO is, that on the corporate side, you often don’t have any IT knowledge at all. So they hire consultants to ask them what to do and don’t have any way of confirming if what they are being told is sane advice.
I’m also really shocked by what the likes of McKinsey of Accenture get away with regarding the quality of people they send.
Edit: I guess I misunderstood “high-end” and thought of “large” consulting firms, because those are the ones that pretty much always suck. I’ve had wonderful experiences with small consultancies.
Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
The people buying the software don't have to use it, would you buy your corporate underlings the comfortable, expensive shoes or just enough rags to painfully remind them who their masters are? SAP produce the lowest cost rags in town, and you will learn to love them.
I thought SAP was extremely expensive.
That’s for the golf course. Same as IBM: The business model is they mostly sell golf courses, and software is a side-effect so they have to save on that.